Foods that Make You Say Mmm-mmm by Bob Garner

Author:Bob Garner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John F. Blair, Publisher

At Stamey’s Barbecue in Greensboro, peach cobbler comes with soft-serve ice cream.

JOHN BARNES

L. V. Anderson, who edits Slate’s food and drink sections and writes a recipe column, “You’re Doing It Wrong,” got downright prickly when discussing cobbler terminology in a piece reprinted in the News & Observer in September 2013. One of Anderson’s main beefs about cobblers was that cooks are too slack with their terms, willy-nilly interchanging cobbler with other variants. These include buckle (fruit filling poured on top of a thin cake batter, then baked until the batter rises above the fruit), pandowdy (fruit filling topped by a piecrust), and crisp (fruit filling topped by streusel consisting of brown sugar, flour, butter, and sometimes chopped nuts). Thankfully, she didn’t get into the terms slumps and grunts, also used from time to time to refer to what were undoubtedly homely cousins to cobblers.

In North Carolina’s Surry County, in the area immediately adjacent to Mount Airy, cobbler has long been known as sonker or zonker. These may be derivatives of a Scottish or Gaelic term meaning “to simmer.” Like cobblers, sonkers are typically made with fruit fillings and various pastry or biscuit toppings, except in larger and deeper pans designed to feed more people. The most popular filling for sonker at Mount Airy’s annual Sonker Festival (held the first Saturday of October) is reportedly sweet potato, served with a warm “dip” of milk, sugar, and vanilla.

But a proper cobbler, said Anderson, “is a dessert consisting of sugared (and often spiced) fruit topped with a sweetened biscuit topping and baked until the fruit is tender and the topping is golden.”

Anderson continued with what came close to poetry: “The bottom part of the topping sinks into the fruit and sops up its flavorful juices, acquiring a dumpling-like texture; the top part undergoes the Maillard reaction [the chemical reaction that gives browned food its flavor] and gets brown and firm; the middle part arranges itself into a light, spongy crumb.

“Meanwhile, the rest of the fruit’s juices mingle with the sugar and whatever thickener you’ve added to it (usually cornstarch or flour) to form a hot, sticky syrup that is best appreciated when juxtaposed with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. The cobbler is, in short, a tremendous dish.”

Many Southerners remember summers when a fresh berry cobbler always seemed to be sitting on the back of the stove, waiting for family members to come along and help themselves to a serving. Whoever presided over the kitchen—Mother, Grandmother, or older sister—would simply gather whatever fresh fruit might be available, dump it in a pan with sugar and a little flour for thickening, and whip up a biscuit crust in nothing flat. This was never a fashionable or fancy dessert, but a beautifully browned cobbler was always as inviting as it was homey, and that remains the case today.

The fact that you can also find cobblers at a great many of our best barbecue restaurants, where they join a veritable collage of food traditions, provides even more reason for celebration.

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